Reading Comprehension Strategies

1. Strategies to Increase
Reading
Comprehension
By Heather Rivet

2. Understanding What You Read
Reading can serve many purposes. When you sit down to read for fun, to
learn something, or for any other reason, your main goal is to understand
what you are reading.
This is called reading comprehension.

3. Understanding the Reading Process
Reading comprehension is easier and more enjoyable when you understand
the reading process and learn strategies that will help you become a
successful reader.

4. There are three stages of reading
• Stage 1: Before you read
• Stage 2: During reading
• Stage 3: After you read
Today we will learn
strategies to improve
reading comprehension
during each stage.

5. Stage 1: Before You
Read
• Reading comprehension starts
before you begin to read.
• Strategies used during this stage
are called pre-reading strategies.
• Using pre-reading strategies will
help you to understand more
during the reading process.

6. Pre-Reading Strategy 1:
Survey the Text
• Read the title and observe any illustrations.
• Skim through the text and take note of any
words that are bold, italicized, or
underlined.
• Decode and read by sight any difficult
words.
• These quick and easy steps will provide
you with clues about the topic and main
ideas of the text.

7. Pre-Reading Strategy 2:
Make Predictions
• Ask yourself “ What is this passage about?”
• Create questions that you expect to answer
during the reading process. Such as “What
would it be like to….?”
• Think about clues that you see in the text that
support your predictions.

8. Pre-Reading Strategy 3:
Frontloading
• Ask yourself, “What do I already know about this topic?”
• Make notes on what you already know about the subject of the
passage.
• Recalling previous knowledge will help you understand more about the
new information that you are reading.

9. Pre-Reading Strategy 4:
Personal Connections
• New information is easier to remember when
it’s something that you can relate to.
• Think about personal experiences that you
have had relating to the main idea of the text.
• Ask yourself “What would you be interested
in learning about the topic?”
• How can this new information be helpful to
you in the future?

10. Pre-Reading Strategy 5:
Graphic Organizers
• Create a graphic organizer to fill out as you read.
• Decide on a format for taking notes.
• Outlines or concept maps are a helpful way to
organize your thoughts and key facts as you
read.
• Flow charts and tree maps are two concept maps
that are very helpful when reading nonfiction text.

11. Stage 2:
During Reading
• It’s time to read!
• Now that you have completed
your learned pre-reading
strategies, you are prepared
to begin reading.
• Successful reading
comprehension requires
active thinking skills during
this stage.
• These next strategies will help
guide your thought process as
you read and help you to
understand what you are
reading.

12. Reading Strategy 1:
Use Your Graphic Organizer
• Make sure that you keep your handy graphic organizer nearby.
• Take note of main ideas, key words, and any information that you feel
will be useful when answering questions.
• Record connections between ideas and concepts in the text.
• Ask yourself “What does the author want me to know?”

13. Reading Strategy 2:
Use Your Imagination
• Illustrations help you understand text, and
so can your imagination.
• Use your imagination to visualize the
people, places, and events in the text.
• Imagine that you are talking with the author
while reading. This can be helpful to think
of questions that will clarify your
understanding.

14. Reading Strategy 3:
Clarify
• As you read, you may come across words, phrases, or concepts that
you are unfamiliar with. These may be key to understanding what you
are reading, so it is important to clarify.
• Many words have clues to their meaning in the sentences around
them. These are called context clues.
• Keep a dictionary handy for those tricky words that can’t be clarified
using context clues.
• When all else fails, ask a friend or an adult for clarification!

15. Reading Strategy4:
Question and Predict
• Question the facts and events in the text.
• Ask yourself questions like, “What came first?”
and “What does the author want me to know?”
• Make predictions about the remainder of the text.
• Ask yourself “What will happen next? What
evidence supports my predictions?”

16. Reading Strategy 5:
Think About Your Comprehension
• Think about what you just read. Did it make sense?
• Was there any part that is hard to understand?
• If there was a part that was hard to understand or didn’t make sense,
it’s time to go back and re-read the passage for clues.
• Ask yourself “Were there any hard words in this section?”
• What did you do when you didn’t understand a word?

17. Stage 3:
After Reading
• You’re not finished thinking just because
you’re finished reading!
• Taking the time to think about what you
just read will help you understand more
and you will remember it longer.
• These next strategies will help you make
sense of what you just read and
integrate your new knowledge with what
you already knew.

18. After Reading Strategy 1:
Review Questions and Predictions
• Take a look at the predictions that you made in the pre-reading stage.
Were they accurate? How were your predictions different from the
text?
• Answer all of those questions that you wrote down during the pre-
reading stage. You may have to take a second look at the text to find
some answers.
• Ask yourself “Is there any section that I didn’t understand?” Then revisit
that section and look for key words that describe the meaning of the
text.

19. After Reading Strategy 2:
Summarize
• Put together all of the information that you just
learned from reading and write about it in your
own words.
• Think about what the author wanted you to
learn about. What message were they
sending?
• Explain the main idea in your own words and
provide details that support your claim.
• The graphic organizer that you created is
helpful when you are having trouble writing a
summary.

20. After Reading Strategy 3:
Generate Questions
• Now that you have a good idea of the key facts
in the text, creating more questions will help
further your understanding of the text.
• Who, what, when, where, and why are great
ways to start your question, but are not the only
way to create a great question.
• Some of your questions should be simple
questions that you can find the answer right in
the text.
• Other questions should make you think and
make inferences, such as “What would happen
if….?”

21. After Reading Strategy 4:
Make Comparisons
• You can learn new information faster and
remember it longer when you make
comparisons between new knowledge and
old knowledge.
• Think about what you already know about
the main idea. Ask yourself “How is this new
information similar to what I already knew?”
• Is this new topic similar to another subject
that you have learned about in the past?
How are they similar?

22. After Reading Strategy 5:
Evaluate Your Strategies
• Think about which strategies you used during each reading stage.
Which strategy was the most helpful to you? Why?
• Was there a part of the text that you had difficulty with? What fix-up
strategy did you use?
• Which strategy was the least helpful to you? What could you change to
make it more helpful?

23. Let’s Review!
• Before you read:
1. Survey the text
2. Make predictions
3. Frontload
4. Make personal
connections
5. Design a graphic organizer

24. • As you read:
1. Use your graphic organizer
2. Use your imagination
3. Clarify
4. Question and predict
5. Think about your comprehension
• After you read:
1. Review your questions and
predictions
2. Summarize
3. Generate questions
4. Make comparisons
5. Evaluate your strategies

25. You’re a successful reader!
• Now that you have these fifteen reading comprehension strategies in
your tool kit, you’re ready to tackle text with ease.
• Using these strategies will help you make the most out of your reading
activities. You will be able to learn more with less difficulty.
• Reading will be more enjoyable now that you are a successful reader.

26. Bursuck W.D., Damer M. (2011) Teaching Reading to Students Who Are at Risk or Have
Disabilities: A Multi-Tier Approach (2nd ed.) Boston, Ma: Pearson Education Inc.
Dees, J. (2010, September 23). 7 Pre-reading Strategies that Will Increase Comprehension.
Retrieved March 30, 2016, from http://www.thereligionteacher.com/pre-reading-strategies-
that-increase-comprehension/
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